


meanwhile she walked alone

by falmarien



Category: Wonder Woman (Movies - Jenkins)
Genre: Gen, Minor Spoiler of Wonder Woman 1984, Spoilers, Wonder Woman 1984, very minor spoiler
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2020-12-17
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:27:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28133154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/falmarien/pseuds/falmarien
Summary: Asteria has been asleep for a long, long time.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 42





	meanwhile she walked alone

**Author's Note:**

> I watched the movie and my feelings are... complicated. This is not good in any way but it’s the least complicated (feelings-wise) and I wanted to get it out, and in that way, I would at least have written something in this inconceivably long year. So here it is! 
> 
> Haven't seen anything besides the first movie, so everything's conjecture and all mistakes are mine. Unbeta'd because my beta hasn't seen the movie yet (sorry).

Asteria has been asleep for a long, long time. 

It was summer, she thinks, when she last went to sleep; the memory of the Mediterranean sun stinging her eyes, the towering blades reflected sharp and vicious, incessant like waves. And the pain, the pain, the pain—slashing open her skin, digging into her ribs, weighing down her shoulders and her calves, trapping her not only in her armour but in her body.

Her people—unshackled at last—burnt into her eyes—disappearing behind enemies—

Asteria has been asleep for a long, long time. The wounds between her ribs are healed, the broken bones have mended themselves, and the scars she will forever bear with pride. But her eyes have never stopped looking, never stopped remembering, the shape of her people riding towards freedom and refuge. 

*

The world is vast; the world is ever-changing. 

At the start, Asteria maintained a low profile; despite what her friends might say, she could be subtle. The century was new, the tongue also, and what a woman was allowed to do or to wear? _That_ was certainly never going to be navigable. She was very aware of the things she didn’t know, but she knew enough to learn and to blend in. This is what she’s gathered: she doesn’t age like humans, but she does get hurt, and pain is never fun. She picks up languages and guises, discards them like rusty blades, and moves around the globe with an entirely new set of armour, no longer golden and no longer with wings.

The old one she hid when she first awoke, but the land has been altered too much for her to find it again. Sometimes she misses it; that can’t be helped. Sometimes, she misses home, too. 

*

She spends long years wandering, aimless and rootless. She thinks she’s died several times, but they never stick, so she can never be quite sure.

She learns to use a gun and she learns to drive, she goes to the end of the earth and discovers there’s _more_ , she watches gods appear and die and born again. She hears once-familiar names in legends and myths; her first instinct was to set the record straight, but she knows better, holding their names on her tongue like treasures and like ashes. On her good days, Asteria finds herself genuinely enjoying life as it comes: the little things, like ice cream, and the big things, like plumbing.

On her bad days, well. 

_Everything ends_ , she tells no one in particular, as yet another of her adopted city crumbles around her, _but not me._

Asteria learns to walk down the street like she doesn’t exist, and that helps, for a time. 

*

(Asteria does not know her people have made a statue of her. Asteria does not know her people celebrate her at their quadrennial games. Asteria does not know her name is kept in history and told to children. 

Asteria does not know about Antiope, her general and her friend.

She does not know about Diana.)

*

There’s nothing new in the world going to shit. Nothing new in and of itself, but she has to say, this time around, the speed is what’s truly impressive about it. Asteria was deep in the desert and missed the first wave of the chaos, but it was as if she walked into a brand new world: the almost-familiar quiver of power rushing through the land, a wall on the horizon erupting into existence, and hundreds of thousands people flowing into the streets, the air taut with panic and desperation. 

Asteria narrows her eyes.

Three days later, she watches the television with the rest of the world, and—she, and only she—recognises a familiar glimmer of gold, the pulsing of the power of the lasso moulded by Hephaestus and Hestia, and wielded by—

*

_“We’ve now had more than a half dozen similar sightings across the greater DC area in the last year…”_

*

She is Asteria of the Amazons, Asteria of the Lost Themyscira, no longer golden and no longer with wings, without her sword and without her people, devoid of hope and of home; but, just perhaps, not anymore.


End file.
